October 31, 2009

Dr. Joseph Warren was a noted physician, Revolutionary War general and an ardent Son of Liberty. He was the son of Joseph and Mary Stevens Warren who lived in Roxbury, Massachusetts and had a large farm on what is now Warren Street. Dr. Joseph Warren was graduated from Harvard in 1759 and studied medicine with James Lloyd, opening his own medical practice in 1764. The same year he married Elizabeth Hooton and they would be the parents of Joseph, Richard, Elizabeth, and Mary Warren. His beloved wife, Elizabeth Hooton Warren, died in 1773, leaving him with young children to raise. In the early 1770s, he developed a close relationship with fellow patriots Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, and he was one of the original members of the patriotic organization, the Sons of Liberty. After the Boston Massacre, he was said to be at every town meeting, arguing for the rights of Americans, and in 1772 he made a speech for the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Warren wrote the Suffolk Resolves, which said that the citizens of Massachusetts would create a militia to protect the citizens, and that if General Thomas Gage. who was then Royal Military Governor of Massachusetts, was to arrest anyone for political reasons, the citizens militia would retaliate by seizing crown officials as hostages. The Suffolk Resolves were signed at the Milton Village home of patriot Daniel Vose and then carried by Paul Revere on horseback to Philadelphia where they were accepted with great acclaim by the First Continental Congress, which directed that the colonies would support Massachusetts. On April 18, 1775, Warren sent Paul Revere and William Dawes by horseback to warn patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, as well as call out the citizens' militia, that the British Army was marching from Boston to the towns of Lexington and Concord to seize arms and rebels. Warren was chosen the Provincial President and on June 14 he was chosen as the second Major General of Massachusetts Militia. At the Battle of Bunker Hill he led the militia and while rallying them during one of the British advances on the hill, he was killed when a musket ball hit him in the back of the head, and died instantly. After the battle, he was removed from Bunker Hill and reinterred in the Minot Family tomb in the Granary Burial Ground, later being moved to the Warren Crypt at St Paul's Cathedral on Tremont Street in Boston. He was reinterred in the Warren Family Lot on Mount Warren in Forest Hills Cemetery, where family members were reinterred from the Eustis Street Burial Ground in Roxbury, their slate headstones encircling a huge boulder of Roxbury puddingstone.

October 30, 2009

The trustees of Forest Hills Cemetery and the trustees of the Forest Hills Educational Trust cordially invite you to join Anthony M. Sammarco – the author of more than 50 books on local history – as he unveils his latest title for Images of America: Forest Hills Cemetery.

Crammed with historic photographs, this fascinating “Who’s Who” of Victorian Boston introduces you to the financiers, industrialists, artists, radicals and revolutionaries buried in Boston’s premier cemetery. Find out “who’s in the book!” Purchase your own copy hot off the presses and have it signed by the author. $15/$10 Trust and JP Historical Society members.

If you support the the Trust’s education programs at this event by joining as a $100 Patron Member, we will thank you with a complimentary copy of Anthony M. Sammarco’s book

Richard H. Lufkin (1851-1922) was the inventor in 1877 of the vamp-folding machine that was to revolutionize the American shoe industry. A diploma from the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association stated that this “is a well-known and meritorious machine and is standard among shoe manufacturers. It turns the edges of leather and cloth for vamps or linings of shoe perfectly, making a superior finish indispensable in a nice fitted shoe. It is unrivalled and is in use in all parts of the country and also abroad.” This likeness of Lufkin, complete with his 22-pound vamp-folding machine, is in stained glass in his mausoleum. The Lufkin Mausoleum is prominently sited on Summit Circle on Milton Hill and was erected in 1928; the mausoleum serves not just as a memorial, but as a place of burial. Above the entrance and carved in enduring granite is the legend “The inventor of the first Vamp Folding Machine” with a three dimensional carving of the device with the patent date of 1877.

October 25, 2009

Bernard Jenney (1827-1918) began the Jenney Manufacturing Company with his brother Francis H. Jenney in 1861; in 1812 their father Stephen Jenney had founded Jenney Oil Company in Boston as a kerosene, coal and whale oil concern. The Jenney bothers initially manufactured burning fluids, a mixture of camphene and alcohol, and after 1856 dealt exclusively in the production and distribution of petroleum. It was said that by the early twentieth century the works of Jenney Manufacturing Company in City Point, South Boston had a capacity of 500 barrels of oil a day. Jenney auto oil and gasoline became a major supplier by the time of 1920 and was a merged into Cities Service about 1965 and the Jenney name was ignobly replaced by Citgo. The Jenney family monument is on Carnation Path.

October 23, 2009

William Fletcher Weld (1800-1881) was a shipping magnate during the golden age of sail. Weld entered the shipping trade that had enriched his father, William Gordon Weld. By 1833, Weld had made enough money to commission "The Senator", the largest ship of her time. Weld eventually became one of the most successful merchant ship owners in America, and he operated fifty one sailing vessels and ten steamers. His fleet sailed under the name and symbol of the "Black Horse Flag". He later invested in real estate and in railroad expansion. Weld multiplied his family's fortune into a huge legacy for his descendants and the public, donating Weld Hall at Harvard in memory of his brother Stephen Minot Weld (1806-1867.) The Weld Family Lot is on Linden Avenue and is marked by an octagonal white marble Gothic spire with shields along the base for each of the family members’ names interred here. Among them are William F. Weld’s first wife Mary Perez Bryant Weld (1804-1836) and his second wife Isabella M. Walker Weld (1812-1906.)

October 22, 2009

The Forest Hills Educational Trust is a nonprofit organization founded in 1991 to preserve, enhance, interpret and celebrate Forest Hills Cemetery. The Trust organizes a variety of programs inspired by the Cemetery’s unique environment – walking tours, concerts, poetry readings, a summer camp program, and adventurous exhibitions of contemporary art as well as ceremonies of remembrance. These activities are designed to invite the community to explore one of the city’s treasures. At first, many people are surprised to find so much happening in a cemetery. However, they quickly realize that Forest Hills is an extraordinary resource, a place to experience art, nature, and history as well as a tranquil sanctuary for reflection and remembrance

The Trust’s expert tour guides – many of them volunteers – give visitors a glimpse of the history of Boston through the stories of the people buried at Forest Hills. Other tours reveal the meaning of the symbols carved in stone memorials – oak leaves for strength, ivy for a faithful nature – and stop at bronze and marble sculpture by the most eminent artists of the 19th and early 20th century; the Trust raises funds to engage conservators every year to care for some of these endangered masterpieces, which are damaged by pollution and New England weather. The Lantern Festival and a traditional Day of the Dead are major community events that draw thousands every year; the beauty and spirituality of Forest Hills make it an inspiring setting to gather and celebrate the memory of family and friends. The Trust’s exhibitions of contemporary art offer new ways to think about age-old themes of family, ancestors, nature, remembrance, the cycles of life, and the world of the spirits. These programs are extremely innovative and have become a national model; however, the Trust is working to restore the original vision of the Cemetery as a destination, a welcoming place for the living as well as an eternal home for the dead.

In the creation of Forest Hills, General Henry A.S. Dearborn with his own hand “marked out the winding avenues and shaded paths, observing how each should reveal some beauty while making available the gentle slopes or the rugged steeps as resting places for the dead…He modeled the imposing gateway at the principal entrance; he projected the chief adornments, and in a word, he stamped his own idea upon the cemetery in all the varied forms with which art has developed and increased the beauties of nature, an untiring industry, and a pious regard for the claims of the dead. Hardly was there a sign that he even desired to associate his name so intimately with the sacred shades of Forest Hills… though such an ambition were no unworthy one. But he labored rather for the love of his work, for the honor of the dead and the solace of the living.” In some ways, Victorians believed that “nature offered special keys for unlocking the mysteries of life and death.” In essence, Forest Hills Cemetery began in 1848 with what was then “a radical plan for burial and commemoration that linked nature, landscape design, and horticulture with art and architecture.”

October 21, 2009

The Milmore Monument is known as Death Staying the Sculptor’s Hand, and is considered to be the masterpiece of Daniel Chester French. This memorial celebrates the lives of sculptor Martin Milmore (1844-1883) and his brother Joseph (1841-1886), a talented stonecutter who taught the art of carving to Martin. The beautiful allegorical figure of the Angel of Death gently lays her hand on the sculptor’s hand, as a reminder that she has come to usher him away. In her other hand Death carries a bouquet of poppies, which holds the promise of eternal sleep. The sculptor, wearing his work apron and holding his tools, is surprised, bewildered and seemingly unwilling to be interrupted. Martin Milmore was a native of Sligo, Ireland and a tall man with large dark eyes and unruly long dark hair; he was said to be “a picturesque figure” by his sculptor friend Daniel Chester French. He cut a dashing figure in his signature black broad brimmed hat and cloak and his “appearance was striking, and he knew it.” Milmore’s soul inspiring statues and monuments to the Union dead served as models for a generation of sculptors. The Milmore Monument was originally at the triangular lot bounded by Poplar Avenue, on the left, and Cypruss Avenue, and was beside the Hanley Family Mausoleum. The monument was moved in 1943 at the request of the Milmore family to its present site, near the Gateway on Forest Hills Avenue, and the lot landscaped by Arthur Ashael Shurcliff and Sidney Nichols Shurcliff.

The Randidge Monument on Fir Avenue commemorates George L. Randidge (1820-1890) and was executed in 1891 by sculptor Adolph Robert Kraus, with the enormous plinth base designed by the Boston architectural firm of Fehmer and Page. The bronze seated figure of Grief in classical robes leans in sorrow on an inverted torch; bronze funerary urns decorate the four corners of the base, which was designed by noted architects Carl Fehmer and Samuel F. Page. Said at the time of its unveiling the “whole monument in its chaste correctness and simplicity, its rich low color, a peculiar brownish granite polish, is a model for emulation in our cemeteries.” Adolph Robert Kraus was the sculptor of Grief, which is a poignant and somber rendering of a mourning maiden, resting her head on her hand which grasps an inverted torch which symbolizes death. Kraus was a well-known sculptor who also did the Jacob Wirth Memorial Fame and the bust of Karl Heinzen that surmounts his monument.

General Charles H. Taylor (1846-1921) was a veteran of the Civil War, having served in the 38th Massachusetts Regiment. After working as a reporter for a few years, he purchased the “Boston Globe” in 1877, which had been founded five years previously, and set about creating the ideal of the modern newspaper of the Victorian era. Taylor began to publish an evening edition, a morning edition as well as a Sunday edition as a family newspaper, thereby pleasing the entire household while increasing its coverage for all of New England. Taylor was also the pioneer of the ten-cent magazine known as “American Homes.” Taylor had served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and as editor and publisher of the newspaper, which included three generations of his family. The Taylor Family Lot is on White Oak Avenue, and is dominated by a large hammered stone with a bronze tablet to Charles H. Taylor and Georgianna Davis Taylor. On either side of the lot are upright limestone crosses for members of the Taylor Family, all of which is encircled by large mature rhododendrons

October 20, 2009

George Lewis (1820-1887) was the last mayor of the city of Roxbury before it was annexed in 1868 to Boston. A merchant in Boston, he served in various capacities as an alderman of Roxbury, a director of the Roxbury Gas Light Company and treasurer of the Granite Railway Company. He served as a trustee, commissioner and treasurer at Forest Hills Cemetery. His white marble bust, sculpted in 1868 by Martin Milmore, is in the collection of Forest Hills Cemetery. The Lewis Family Lot is on Cherry Avenue. Elijah Lewis (1773-1858) and Elizabeth Sumner Lewis (1791-1874) chose a white marble four-sided Gothic inspired monument, which is also the resting place of Mayor George Lewis (1820-1887,) the last mayor of Roxbury before it was annexed to Boston in 1868, and of his wife Susan Minns Lewis, and their descendants.

Martin Milmore (1844-1883) was a native of Sligo, Ireland. A tall man with large dark eyes and long dark hair, he was said to be “a picturesque figure” by his sculptor friend Daniel Chester French. With his brother Thomas Milmore, he was one of the most influential sculptors of the mid nineteenth century and was mentor and friend to a generation of artists who continued his vision after his untimely death at the age of 39. The Milmore Monument is known as Death Staying the Sculptor’s Hand, and is considered to be the masterpiece of Daniel Chester French. The memorial celebrates the lives of sculptor Martin Milmore (1844-1883) and his brother Joseph (1841-1886), a talented stonecutter who taught the art of carving to Martin; the Milmore Family were Irish immigrants who settled in Boston in 1851. The beautiful allegorical figure of the Angel of Death gently lays her hand on the sculptor’s hand, as a reminder that she has come to usher him away. In her other hand Death carries a bouquet of poppies, which holds the promise of eternal sleep. The sculptor, wearing his work apron and holding his tools, is surprised, bewildered and seemingly unwilling to be interrupted.

Fanny Lily Gypsy Davenport (1850-1898) was a well-known actress in the late nineteenth century. Born in London to parents who were noted actors, she was educated in Boston, and first appeared at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston, as the child of Metamora. Davenport was eminently successful as an actress, with a wide spectrum of roles that went from Shakespeare to French melodrama; she achieved fame by obtaining the American rights to the dramatist Victorien Sardou’s highly emotional plays. This photo from c.1880 depicts her as the spendthrift Lady Teazle in the comedy of manners “School for Scandal.” The Davenport monument is a white marble tree trunk on Arethusa Path.

October 19, 2009

Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was a leader of the national women's rights movement and referred to as "the morning star of the woman's rights movement." She was an organizer of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the first Massachusetts woman to receive a college degree (Oberlin College in 1838,) the first married woman to keep her own name (wife of Henry Browne Blackwell,) and the founder and editor of the Women's Journal. She was the first person to be cremated in New England, which was at the Massachusetts Cremation Society, now the Forest Hills Crematorium, where her ashes are deposited in a large urn later co-mingled with those of her husband and daughter, and placed in a prominent niche in the Columbarium.

Burial #1 is an immense honor at Forest Hills Cemetery, sort of like a single digit license plate number, but in this case it is so much more interesting!

Major General Henry Dearborn (1751-1829) was a physician, statesman and veteran of both the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Dearborn served as Secretary of War under President Thomas Jefferson, and later as Minister Plenipotentiary to Portugal from 1822 to 1824 under President James Monroe. His extensive estate in Roxbury was on Parker Hill and is today the site of the Mission Church. Dearborn, and his second wife Dorcas Osgood Marble Dearborn (1752-1810) were interred on Sweet Briar Path at the new Forest Hills in 1848, after having been removed from Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. The Dearborn Monument surmounts Mount Dearborn and was erected by Henry Dearborn to commemorate the Reverend John Eliot (1604-1691) known as the “Apostle to the Indians” and minister of the Roxbury Meetinghouse. The simple sixteen foot white marble Corinthian column is flanked by matching urns, which mark the graves of Henry and Dorcas Marble Dearborn, parents of Henry A.S. Dearborn, who were interred at Forest Hills Cemetery as Burials #1 and #2. They had been buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery but were moved here upon the founding of Forest Hills Cemetery.

Henry J. Pfaff (1826-1893) was a well-known lager beer brewer whose brewery was active from 1857 to 1918, and was located at 1276 Columbus Avenue, the present site of Roxbury Community College. The abundant and crystal clear water from Stony Brook, along with artesian wells bubbling to the surface around Mission Hill, in addition to the affordable land after the City of Roxbury merged with Boston in 1868 made Pfaff’s one of the major brewers. With his brother, Pfaff established the H&J Pfaff Brewery that imparted a little bit of old Germany that created the demand for the new German type Lager beers. The Pfaff Mausoleum was designed by Whitman & Howard and is an impressive Egyptian Revival granite mausoleum on a knoll overlooking Tupelo Avenue. The use of Egyptian Revival architecture for a memorial is something that was popular throughout the nineteenth century as it represented an ancient culture that was devoted to the afterlife and reverence for the dead.

Albert Augustus Pope (1843-1909) was the founder of the Pope Manufacturing Company, which produced the immensely popular “Columbia” bicycle. Pope was an advocate for bicycles in Victorian America, and sponsored races and the Boston Bicycle Club. He diversified into automobile production, with his automobiles known as the Pope Motor Carriage, later renamed the Colombia Automobile Company, which was spun off and which was sold to the Electric Vehicle Company. His production methods pointed the way for the building of automobiles through lightweight metals, rubber tires, precision machining, interchangeability of parts, and vertical integration, and he was also an advocate for improved roads and came be called the “Father of Good Roads.” The Pope Monument is on Arbutus Path and was designed by the Boston architectural firm of Dwight and Chandler and built in 1896 as a classical temple front with four granite Doric columns supporting a pediment and set against a stone embankment wall. The classically inspired monument has a large bronze tablet of an angel set into the wall, of a whispering ethereal angel, flanked by family names with small headstones fronting the lot.

William Alfred Paine (1855-1929) was a businessman who co-founded the stock brokerage firm of Paine Webber. He began his career in finance in 1873 as a clerk at a Boston bank. In 1880, with a loan from his minister father, he partnered with Wallace G. Webber to create the brokerage firm Paine, Webber & Company, becoming members of both the Boston and New York Stock Exchanges. Paine also invested in the Copper Range Consolidated Company, a major copper mining venture in Michigan, of which he served as president. The town of Painesdale, Michigan was named for him and Freda, Michigan was named for his daughter. His son, F. Ward Paine, later became head of Paine, Webber & Company. The Paine Monument is on Summit Avenue and was designed by Louis C. Tiffany Studios. A large limestone memorial with a center pediment section flanked by high backed seats in the form of an exhedra, it has urns surmounting the end plinths. The Celtic inspired tracery on the top portion of the monument and the pediment add lightness to the design with a recessed arched opening with flanking Doric columns.

October 16, 2009

The Harris Mausoleum is on Consecration Avenue and is set into the side of Consecration Hill. Horatio Harris (1821-1876) and his wife Eunice Crehore Harris lived on Walnut Avenue in Roxbury, and after their deaths their estate was developed as Horatio Harris Park and Harriswood Crescent, an impressive row of Queen Anne Revival houses built in 1890. Harris was a commission merchant, and proprietor of the Adams, Oxnard and Continental Sugar Refineries. He was one of the originators, and a director, of the Metropolitan Street Railway in Roxbury.

Dr. Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska (1829-1902) was a native of Poland and was educated at the Cleveland Western Reserve Medical College, and taught obstetrics at the New England Female Medical College in Boston. Dr. Zak, as she was affectionately called, was the founder of the New England Hospital for Women and Children, a ten bed hospital that grew in size and influence under her able direction. Founding the female-staffed Boston based hospital in 1862, its mission was to provide specialized medical care for women and children, which was a somewhat novel concept but taken to with alacrity by Bostonians. The first professional nursing program in this country was launched in this hospital. Her monument tells it all, she was a “skilful and human physician.”

October 15, 2009

Maria Parloa (1843-1909) was a native Bostonian who was to become a noted spokesperson for the Walter Baker & Company, Ltd. Miss Parloa, as she was known to many readers, had begun her career as a cook, working at one point as the pastry cook at the famous Appledore House on Appledore Island off the New Hampshire Coast, which was immortalized by Celia Thaxter whose family operated the famous inn for decades. Her 1872 book The Appledore Cook Book was to include her recipe on Tomato Chowder, which is still credited as the first tomato soup recipe to appear in print. After her graduation from the Maine Central Institute in 1871 she relocated to Mandarin, Florida for winters and where she began offering cooking classes that were fully subscribed and which were to launch her eventual career as a cooking teacher.Miss Parloa returned to Boston where she taught Domestic Science at the Lasell (now College) Female Seminary in Newton, Massachusetts, which had been founded in 1851 by Edward Lasell. Her astute teaching methods were well received and she was to open Miss Parola’s Cooking School on Tremont Street in Boston, which led to her teaching at the Boston Cooking School, which she is also credited with co-founding, as well as at her own school. Parola expanded her cooking school to New York City where she offered classes for enrolled students during the day, and free classes in the evening for immigrant women, who learned how to prepare highly nutritious but also economical meals for their families. Relocating in 1887 back to Boston, for the next two decades she had a very productive and financially successful career. Her partial ownership of the “Ladies Home Journal” magazine allowed her articles on food and its preparation to be read by women far and wide, and her cookbooks, beginning in 1878 with Camp Cookery would eventually number eleven including Miss Parola’s New Cook Book: A Guide to Marketing and Cooking and Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes by Miss Parola for the Walter Baker & Company.Miss Parloa extolled the nutritional qualities of chocolate, and her articles and recipes were well received by a chocolate loving readership. Her interest in the science of cooking, and her friendships with Ellen Swallow Richards, Mary Bailey Lincoln and Fannie Farmer expended her culinary interests, cooking skills and ability to teach others the skills and joys of cooking. Her innovative cooking skills led to her recipe in her 1882 book Miss Parloa’s New Cookbook for “Pigs-in-a-Blanket” which were fresh oysters seasoned with salt and pepper, rolled in a slice of bacon, secured with a toothpick and broiled, and served hot on toast. This highly innovative cook was also able to transcend the many skills necessary to teach the public to cook with ease and skill, and Walter Baker & Company continued to solicit her input and involvement until her death in 1909 in Bethel, Connecticut and her burial at Forest Hills Cemetery.

Andrew Carney (1794-1864) was called “One of God’s Noblemen” as he was to endow a hospital that still bears his name in Dorchester. A native of Ireland, he was apprenticed as a tailor before joining with Jacob Sleeper in the firm of Carney & Sleeper, manufacturers of men’s ready made clothing. Carney served as a trustee of the Hibernia Savings Bank and of many charitable endeavors. His generosity helped to establish Boston College and the Immaculate Conception Church in Boston’s South End. The Carney Hospital was founded in 1863 to serve the needs of all “where the sick without distinction of creed, color or nation shall be received and cared for.” The Carney Lot is at the junction of Lake and Forest Avenues and is one of the most prominent sites in the cemetery, overlooking Lake Hibiscus. The Carney Memorial is an elaborate confection of white marble Gothic ornamentation with an angel set under a baldicchino and a four sided cap and a center pinnacle surmounted by a cross. Carney was initially buried in the chapel at the Carney Hospital in South Boston but was moved and reinterred at Forest Hills by his wife Pamelia Reggio Carney (1793-1875.)

The Receiving Tomb at Forest Hills Cemetery was designed by William Ralph Emerson and Carl Fehmer, partners in the architectural firm of Emerson & Fehmer in Boston, and built in 1871 on Consecration Avenue near the Main Gate. The high style granite Victorian Gothic Revival building has underground crypts where burials could be securely held during winter months while awaiting burial, or for transport elsewhere. Opposite the Receiving Tomb is a magnificent oval garden that has been bedded out with specimen plants and perennials for well over a century, with a central decorative playing fountain that was added in 1878.

TheChadwick Mausoleum is a large limestone Gothic Revival tomb designed by William Gibbons Preston (1842-1910) and built on Fountain Avenue facing Lake Hibiscus. Nestled into the sloped hill in the rear, it is an elegant church-like structure with a heavy grilled lead door bearing the name “Chadwick.” The mausoleum exemplifies the picturesque ideal on which Forest Hills has been established, creating an impressive but charming place. Joseph Houghton Chadwick (1827-1902) was president of the Chadwick Lead Works, located on High Street in downtown Boston. A successful businessman, he was a founding trustee of Boston University and served as president and as a trustee of Forest Hills Cemetery. The Chadwick Lead Company still stands in Boston and is an impressive six-story building designed by William Gibbons Preston (1842-1910) and built in 1887. Chadwick’s home, also designed by Preston, was built in 1895 at 20 Cushing Avenue in Dorchester.

Historic Forest Hills Cemetery

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Forest Hills is a historic cemetery located in Boston, Massachusetts. Designed in 1848 as a 250-acre park and arboretum as well as a burial ground, it helped inspire Frederick Law Olmsted's Emerald Necklace a generation later. Visitors discover a grand Victorian landscape filled with treasures of 19th century art and architecture, a green oasis shaded by magnificent canopy trees, and a sanctuary for birds and urban wildlife.